Supportland: How Local Can You Go?

Supportland allows consumers to collect reward points for shopping locally.

So, a Portlander walks into a bar.

The bar is locally-owned and part of its draw. The Portlander places an order, and when it’s time to pay, she pulls out a Supportland card along with her credit card. The bartender swipes both cards—the credit card for payment, and the Supportland card to gain rewards points for visiting a participating local business.

Whenever this Portlander visits a business with a Supportland sticker in its window, it’s second verse, same as the first—she gets points for supporting a local business, whether it’s a pastry shop, specialty fabric store, dentist, or mechanic. And when the points accumulate, they’re good for rewards from any local business using the Supportland network.

"[The points system] is broad, so people use it more," said Gina Cadenasso, owner of Bolt Neighborhood Fabric Boutique and a partner at Modern Domestic, both on Alberta Street. "It’s not like getting a coupon for something you aren’t going to use anyway.”

A Tech Start-Up With a Huge Community Piece

Katrina and Michael Scotto di Carlo launched Supportland August 4 to provide local, independent business owners with electronic means for tracking customer purchases and rewards points, all with the aim to bolster the local business community.

The tech start-up has 44 member businesses who pay $49 per month to use Supportland’s software, and about 350 are waiting to join. Within its first month of operation, 6,000 Supportland cards went into circulation, racking up more than 25,000 sales transactions at local businesses.

A consumer can get up to five points daily for visiting Supportland member businesses, plus 15 points for each swipe at a business visited for the first time.

A Supportland iPhone application for member businesses is near-completion and awaiting approval from Apple, Katrina Scotto di Carlo said. Consumer apps for the iPhone and Droid are also in the works, and would allow customers to track Supportland points on their phones in lieu of cards.

“It seemed like a really powerful, well thought out program,” Cadenasso said. “It kind of walks the line of an alternative currency, but not to a point where it’s going to become a legal issue.”

Power in Numbers

The Supportland software network doesn’t track customers’ personal information, Katrina Scotto di Carlo said, but it does provide local businesses with collective sales data.

“The metrics don’t have to do with personal information, just with keeping money in the local economy,” she said.

For Jessie Burke, use of Supportland cards has given a clearer idea of how many customers her Posies Cafe serves in North Portland. Posies went through its first 100 cards in less than a week and now has about 350 in circulation, she said.

Cadenasso found that the Supportland software helped her learn about customer patterns among the network’s members.

“If we have a high percentage of shared customers, then we know we can do some collaboration,” such as joint advertising and events, she said. “It’s huge because all of these local businesses typically have a few people running them and it’s hard to get out and network.”

Good Riddance, Punch Cards

Posies Cafe in Kenton.

The Scotto di Carlos’ services to member businesses include virtual coupon capability, sales incentive programs, and the ability to contact customers electronically with sales offers. But its most popular use seems to be its replacement of the paper punch card.

“You could have several punch cards on one of our cards,” Katrina Scotto di Carlo said. “Good riddance, all those paper punch cards.”

For Burke, electronic punch cards were a key selling point in the program.

“I was sold because it justified the monthly expense” of $49, she said. “We go through about 1,000 paper stamp cards every two months, so the cost of printing those was going to be more than just having these reusable cards.”

The Expansion Paradox

Most of Supportland’s member businesses lie near the company’s home base in North Portland, but its waiting list includes businesses throughout the city. The waiting list also includes a handful of businesses from Vancouver, Milwaukee and Beaverton, highlighting the Scotto di Carlos’ challenge—to stay true to their original intent of local support while expanding their company’s reach.

“We’re unwavering in our commitment to local businesses. But we’ll go where businesses want us to go,” Katrina Scotto di Carlo said. She added that the company doesn’t have a sales team and that nearly all its members have come via word of mouth.

While it sounds like an oxymoron, the couple have a broad vision of their localcentric work, and hope to take it to small networks of independent business owners outside Portland.

“We want to hand off the network to a buy-local group, a government organization, a community bank, or an individual who really gets it,” Katrina Scotto di Carlo said.

From there, the software would be redesigned and rebranded by designers from the new network’s local area, she said. Its local operators would receive revenue from members’ monthly fees, and would likely pay Supportland for use of the technology.

Katrina Scotto di Carlo said she’s not sure whether this type of business plan would lead the company to become a franchisor—the very type of business that Supportland typically excludes from its membership.*

Defining Local

All this shines the light on the often-nebulous definition of the term “local business.”

“We’re not going to be the intellectual front for what is local,” Katrina Scotto di Carlo said. “But it seems like a lot of big questions are being asked now.”

Supportland’s current member businesses have at least 51 percent of their ownership based in the Portland Metro area. In line with guidelines of the Sustainable Business Network of Portland, member businesses must be privately held, hold registered headquarters in the local metro area, be able to make business decisions independently, and pay all business expenses without corporate assistance.

If a business is Portland-based with locations outside the metro area, an outlying location cannot operate the Supportland software until a new Supportland network develops in that area, she said.

Likewise, Portland business owners running a franchise of a larger business based elsewhere cannot join Supportland, she said.

“There’s an emotional response sometimes from franchise owners because they don’t qualify as locally owned,” she said. “We’re here to support the people who don’t get support from an umbrella organization.”

While the ideal would be to spend money solely at locally and independently owned businesses that offer locally sourced and manufactured products, independent Portland business owners see the value in growing a business beyond a mom-and-pop shop.

“I think New Seasons is as much a local business as I am,” Burke said. “Every business owner hopes that there is a great enough demand for their product [so] that opening more than one location proves beneficial to both parties [business and consumer].”

*Portland-based franchisors that meet all other membership criteria can use Supportland at their locations in the Portland Metro area. But a franchisee that is supported by a franchisor based outside the Portland Metro area cannot become a member.